Jake Arditti

Biography

“… a rising star” (Observer)

Already a professional singer at the age of eleven, when he sang Yniold in Pelléas et Mélisande for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and in several productions at ENO, Jake Arditti has had a meteoric rise to fame since his prize-winning performance at the 2012 Innsbruck Baroque Singing Competition.

His “… show-stealing riches of vocal colour and stage presence” (Daily Telegraph), have already brought him widespread critical and public acclaim, not only in such baroque virtuoso warhorses as Handel’s Rinaldo (Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow), Serse (title-role at Longborough Festival Opera), Riccardo Primo (title-role at the London Handel Festival), Sesto (Teatro Colón) and Nireno (ENO) in Giulio Cesare, Narciso in Agrippina (Opera Vlaanderen), but such rarities as Emone in Traetta’s Antigone (Wiener Kammeroper) and Euripilo‚ La Discordia and Polluce in Cavalli’s Elena (Festival d’Aix en Provence, Lille and Lisbon).

In English Baroque repertoire he has performed the Spirit in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Cupid in Blow’s Venus and Adonis, both for Innsbruck, while the Guardian described his Othniel (Handel’s Joshua) for Opera North as “outstanding”. He most recently sung David in Handel's Saul (Theater an der Wien), a role debut in a new production directed by Claus Guth and conducted by Laurence Cummings.Romantic and modern roles include Hänsel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel (Wiener Kammeroper), Voice of Apollo in Death in Venice (Stuttgart), Prince Gogo in Ligeti’s Le grand macabre (Essen), and SUM‚ by Max Richter and Wayne McGregor, premiered at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre in 2012. His extended vocal range has also seen him encompass such roles as Amore (Theater an der Wien and Zürich Opera) and Nerone (Pinchgut Opera, Sydney) in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, as well as Handel’s soprano take on Nerone in Agrippina (Theater an der Wien and Göttingen Handel Festival).

On the concert platform, Jake Arditti has displayed a similarly remarkable versatility, from Satirino in Cavalli’s La Calisto (La Nuova Musica at the Wigmore Hall), Contre-ténors (with Il Pomo d’Oro at the Festival de Sablé) and From Soul to Soul with the Pera Ensemble in Heidelberg and Cologne, to the premieres of Hilda Paredes’ Canciones Lunáticas for countertenor and string quartet (at the Edinburgh Festival and numerous other venues on both sides of the Atlantic). He also gave the premiere performance of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Cosa Resta with the Arditti Quartet in Munich (Herculessaal), Paris (Festival d’Automne), London (Wigmore Hall) and at the Festival Milano Musica.

Future plans include Apollo in Legrenzi’s La Divisione del Mondo with Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques (Strasbourg, Mulhouse, Colmar, Nancy and Versailles) and Sesto in Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Halle. He will also record the role of Ernesto in Vinci’s Gismondo, re di Polonia (with concerts in Gliwice and Vienna), as part of a new project with Parnassus Arts Productions. During the 2018/19 season, he will also make his debut at the Musikverein in Vienna, with a solo programme dedicated entirely to Handel’s Young Lovers.